


Living Colour

by Moretta



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Happy, Interviews, No Angst, Pre-Movie(s), Raleigh & Yancy are bros and brothers, also Pentecost and Tendo are in this briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moretta/pseuds/Moretta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little bit of Yancy and Raleigh pre-Knifehead and pre-film. Fresh out of the Academy and still rookies, they're interviewed - flashbacks and quips and a little bit of a brawl on national television.<br/>A little bit of fluff and brotherly love without a single bit of angst!.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living Colour

**Author's Note:**

> There is also a playlist to go along with this [here](http://8tracks.com/morettaallstar/yancy-is-the-sexy-brother).

The lights come back on after their introduction video and the chat-show host smiles, red lipstick gleaming, the cameras focusing back on her and her flirty attitude.  
“You boys are obviously the best of the bunch, being the only Alaskans in the program.”  
The crowd cheers and she winks at them, entirely unsubtly, for the camera. Yancy elbows him in the side and Raleigh doesn't need to have his brother in the back of his mind to know that Yance is planning on taking this one to bed.  
“How many kills?”  
Yancy snakes an arm onto the back of the sofa they're on, smirks and says, “Real life or in the simulator?”  
The audience roars about real life, the screen behind the host lighting up with pictures of their latest mission, zoomed in, helicopters flying past the kaiju and their Gypsy Danger.  
“Two drops,” says Raleigh, “Two kills. So far. We're the rookies of the Anchorage Shatterdome, so we're never picked for the bigger missions.”  
“Yeah,” Yancy adds, picking up his glass of water, “We're usually the ones that have to get up in the middle of the night.”  
“It's a long way up to the top, but I'm confident you'll get there.”  
The host takes a moment to smile at the cameras, rearrange her cards.  
“But can you tell us how you got there?”  
Yancy grins back at her, shows his teeth, “We fought our way in.”  
Raleigh cuts through the woman's raised eyebrow, “And kept on fighting. You volunteer or you enlist, then there's nothing but tests. Aptitudes,”

_Psych Analysts and Specialists and other people who referred to themselves in titles and capital letters. Personality tests and first responses and in the presence of his brother and without the presence of his brother and neurological analyses and friendships and relationships and self-assessments and awareness and a whole load more bullshit._  
 _Yancy shrugged off the Analyst who was trying to get him to open up about his childhood demons – Raleigh knew because she was trying to get him to do the same. Unfortunately for her, they didn't have any childhood demons. All their demons were a lot more recent. Raleigh had opened up, but Yancy had always had trouble not being the strong one, the one to protect._  
 _The right side of the brain, the dominant one. He laughed, and Yance pulled him away from the wall to go find some food._  
 _That afternoon they had to fill in a preference test, food and music and books, and Raleigh laughed when Yancy showed him his answers._  
 _Whipped cream and women, moans and fingertips._  
 _Salacious and snarky and a little bit thoughtful. All Yancy._

“Capacity to remember,”

_Raleigh rubbed at an eye while running through his notes again, mumbling to himself, “Neural compatibility and drift compatibility appear to be related but not the same – DNA was thought to play the largest factor until the bridge was tested with an unrelated couple.”_  
 _“So as long as you're compatible in some random way that must be chemical but won't actually let itself be quantified, you'll Drift alright?”_  
 _Yancy looked down from the top bunk, eyebrow raised._  
 _Raleigh flopped back onto the bed, head hanging off the side, “Yeah, pretty much. A lot of it seems to be about trust and knowing your partner and getting along.”_  
 _“Guess we'll be fine then, huh? You already know I'm amazing.”_  
 _“I think you mean: a dick.”_  
 _“S'what I said, isn't it?”_

“mental and physical strength.”

_Yancy panted, handing him the baton and completing their circuit. Not first, but still under two minutes._  
 _“Not bad,” snarked the girl who had sat with them at dinner the night before, Angelina? Angeliki?, twirling her own baton in one hand, “But not better than us.”_  
 _Her brother grinned over her shoulder, making a face at Raleigh that translated into, 'Look at these two idiots flirting.'_  
 _Raleigh grinned back, but before he could reply, Pentecost called them all to attention, to stand in two straight lines._  
 _“Again!” Pentecost told them, “But this time, you'll climb the wall and be back in less than one minute.”_  
 _“But sir,” one of the younger guys interrupted, making Raleigh wince at Pentecost's twitching jaw, “It's unlikely we'll manage. I mean, most of us have a record of over seventy-”_  
 _“One minute, recruit, or you'll be cut. Do you want to be a Ranger?”_  
 _The boy nodded._  
 _“I said, do you want to be a Ranger?”_  
 _As one, the crowd straightened, faced the front, “Sir, yes, sir!”_  
 _“Rangers obey orders, immediately. This is not the time for creative thinking. Places! Start the run in five, four...”_

“Not to mention something you can't learn. Drift compatibility.”

_Raleigh was bouncing up and down like an excited puppy. They had finally gone into the Drift together, the real thing, not the simulations that they had been playing with so far, in a Jaeger. Finally._  
 _They had aced it._  
 _“We aced it, kid!”_  
 _Yancy hugged him fiercely, every dream of becoming a superhero close to the surface. Raleigh could almost reach out and touch his thoughts as easily as putting his arms around him, revelled in the glow, in the slight connection that still held, maybe just in his imagination._  
 _This was it._  
 _Full marks._  
 _They had made the cut._

“And then you train, in everything you can think of and more.”

_Jeager training, becoming Ranger ready was even more hardcore than the recruit stuff. They spent hours in the Kwoon, fighting each other, going through drills alone or in groups, letting other pilots and almost-Rangers interrupt and tell their stories and pit themselves against the Becket Boys._  
 _Drivesuit testing was fun. Tendo Choi had joined the Academy to be able to play with the tech, not fight in it. He was their primary contact and he was a blast, and his knowledge of everything Jaeger-related was fascinating. Yancy had once remarked that it was weird to know someone so geeky who was so cool, watching from the sidelines as Tendo had gone up to Allison fucking Margot and asked her out, even though she had a boyfriend about the size of Yancy and Raleigh put together. Balls of steels, sly like a fox._  
 _He taught them everything he could about the human-Jaeger interaction. And maybe Yancy taught him a little about human-to-human interaction, but hey. What happened in the 'dome stays in the 'dome. Or in the Drift._  
 _The Drift becomes – not easier to handle, because it's not something you handle. It's something you experience. It becomes less of a strain to get into, less of a conscious effort._  
 _The Psych Analysts prod at them until they confess to ghost-drifting._  
 _Pentecost moved to the Anchorage 'dome when they did. He still trains them hard. They are his Rangers, and they will be at their best, always._

“Why do you think you two work so well? Is it the brotherhood, the years of knowing each other and your style? The shared family history?”  
Raleigh mostly manages to contain his shrug, “Being brothers is definitely part of it, yeah. We know each other almost better than we know ourselves at this point.”  
“We've worked forever, there was no way we were ever going to be anything but awesome.”  
“Yance here is known all over the Academy for his modesty,” Raleigh rolls his eyes, teasing, “But he's not all wrong. We're some of the youngest recruits to become Rangers. We're part of an even smaller percentage of those who actually become pilots.”  
“It's because we fought hard,” Yancy repeats, “Studied hard, went through the training then and keep it up even now we're pilots – body and mind conditioning.”  
“It's not easy,” Raleigh stresses, continues with confidence, “But for us, it was worth it. We're the sort of people that are made for piloting.”  
Yancy grins, forever working the crowd, which is mainly populated by women between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five, “Of course, my innate sexiness does help.”  
“We did poll our audience,” says the host, with another smirk, “and it turns out that Yancy is indeed the sexier brother.”  
Raleigh groans as Yancy cheers, the audience divided between applauding along and booing, chanting for the younger Becket, who flushes in embarrassment, much to everyone's delight.  
The screen behind them flashes with stills from their intro video – shots from the Kwoon, with them fighting shirtless.  
The crowd goes wild.  
Yancy claps an arm around Raleigh's shoulder, and uses his distraction to lift up his sweatshirt just enough to tease at a hint of abs, but the minute Raleigh notices they're wrestling on the floor, as though they were kids, like they did when they were kids, and Yancy's jumper is removed in the process.  
Raleigh throws it to the audence and before they know it, they've been ushered out of the studio for their own safety,

Tendo laughs at them for hours when they get back, Yancy covered in lipstick stains and not much else. The next day, he leads the cafeteria in a mass rendition of “Sex Bomb” when they go for lunch, set to images of their little brawl on national tv and their shirtless scenes from the intro vid.  
Raleigh laughs and Yancy dances and the Anchorage Shatterdome settles into his bones. This is their home.


End file.
